Photo courtesy of El Marco:“There were dozens of communist groups represented. The International Socialist Organization did good business selling books and signing up new members.”
It is with a heavy heart that I have to take issue with a post of Ed Morrissey’s at Hot Air, because he is spot on correct at least 99% of the time in his analyses. But I strongly disagree with some of the points he made about the One Nation rally: The eternal, futile, and dangerous demand for “unity”
I believe he was wrong to criticize Daily Beast writer, John Avlon for being “obsessed with the fringe” in his takedown of the rally:
Avlon then proceeds to give his readers a rundown of the nuttier signs and slogans touted at the rally as a means of discrediting the entire event. And don’t get me wrong; any event that requires unions to provide buses to get people to attend has plenty of room for criticism as a “grassroots” rally. But these events take place in public venues, which means that anyone can show up with idiotic signs, either as a deliberate attempt to discredit the others who attend in good faith or just to exploit the media attention for their own purposes. International ANSWER, a neo-Stalinist group that Avlon uses as a prime example of his thesis in this piece, organizes its own events and also shows up at others where attention actually gets paid.
Ed. Visit their website.
ANSWER, and other Communist/Socialist/Marxist groups were not just fringe groups that “showed up” uninvited, either to discredit the rally, or exploit it. Communists were explicitly welcomed to participate in the march.
The One Nation website proudly displayed “endorsing organizations” on their website for weeks before the event.
A partial list of some of the fringier elements proudly displayed on their website:
La Raza
Code Pink
Communist Party USA
Democrat Socialists of America
Gray Panthers
Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition
Solidarity, a socialist, feminist, anti-racist organization
Green for All
Queers for Economic Justice
American Muslim Association of North America
War Resistors League
Rainbow Push Coalition
Peace Action
ANSWER (anti-war)
I posted the entire list, here, in case, One Nation decided to scrub some of the more radical groups from the list.
It’s a cheap shot when people use the LaRouchians and bigots who hijack Tea Party events to carry their lonely signs as emblematic of the movement, and it’s equally cheap in this instance. The speakers and organizers are fair game, of course, but these rallies don’t take place in private venues. There are no tickets and security at gates to ensure that the freak shows stay on the outside.
It’s a cheap shot when people use the LaRouchians to smear the tea party because they really are party crashers. It is NOT a cheap shot to point out the far-left fringe nature of a far-left fringe event. How can you not see this? And it’s not a cheap shot to note that prominent Democrats, like Howard Dean and Kirstin Gillibrand and Obama’s OFA went out of their way to endorse the radical One Nation rally.
In a sense, we want the nutcases to carry signs and show up at public rallies, at least to some extent. If people feel free to air their views in the public marketplace of ideas, they’re less likely to find other ways to be heard, or to impose their radical views on everyone else without their consent. Perhaps more importantly, it identifies the lunatics so we know who they are.
Are we really to believe that the far left, who have been marching through our institutions for decades, and now finally have fellow travelers in the White House, and Congress, somehow got their radicalism out of their systems by demonstrating in Washington, Saturday? Please.
These people are letting us know who they are.
From the Left’s point of view, they are now completely, unabashedly out in the open. There’s no more hiding behind bromides and phony feel-good names, the Left has now unmasked itself. Socialists, Communists, labor unions, liberals, progressives and other assorted riff-raff…why, they are all, undisputedly, one big, incestuously happy family now.
And, for them, there is no going back into the closet, no turning back: We’re socialists and we’re proud.
We don’t do ourselves any favors when we refuse to countenance what a significant number of our countrymen have become.
Their smiles don’t disguise the loathing they feel for what America is, but they do reflect their joy at what they hope she becomes.
Unfortunately for these useful idiots, malevolent fools and active seditionists, many of us remember the old USSR and what it looked like and what it smelled like. We’ve been hearing this same propaganda for decades; the only difference now is that they’re out and proud.
Read this from the CPUSA website: Why we march and vote.
Corporate America is also using anti-communism and red baiting to confuse and divide the people’s movement, charging Obama and the movement that elected him is “socialist.” They seek to revive the “red scare” of the 1950s when McCarthyism disfigured the national discourse, undermined democracy and free speech, effectively divided the labor and people’s movements, and setback progress for a generation.
Got that? We’re “red-baiting” when we accuse self proclaimed Communists of being Communists.
But this is a different time. People have learned the bitter lessons of history millions are coming forward to counter fear and hate with unity and hope, and to protect the democratic majorities in Congress. The Communist Party USA and Young Communist League stand with them.
While thousands are rallying in Washington for jobs, hundreds of thousands of other patriotic Americans who can’t make it will be there in spirit. They will spend their day canvassing door to door, phone banking, registering new voters and talking to their neighbors and co-workers about the issues.
This activism will ensure millions will also march united to the polls on Nov. 2. to guard the change they voted for in 2008.
These people are not going to stop now, when they’ve come so far.
UPDATE:
And here, I had thought I was just one lonely voice…
Dan Riehl already forcefully took Ed to task on Sunday. (I had read Ed’s piece Sunday night, but was too tired and annoyed to deal with it, then).
If one wants to characterize today’s political disagreements as run of the mill, fine. But it seems to me that to do that, one is either willfully turning a blind eye, or genuinely ignorant of what’s really at stake. The Left today, which Obama epitomizes, stands for an effectively all but demilitarized America, one in which the government mandates the state of health care, while dictating the vast majority of choices any American citizen can make, from what you eat, to what one can earn dollar-wise, let alone fork over to the state.
We’ve already reached a point in America today where our genuine liberties and our rights to them are being constrained at every turn, either by the judiciary, or both the executive and legislative branches of government – much of it empowered by the same protesters at this One Nation event in very general terms. It isn’t simply the fringe groups, as Ed would assert.
Perhaps it’s just Ed’s search for comity that drives his thinking and analysis. I know him to be a very good guy. Unfortunately, this is not the time for good guys on the Right today. Through accommodation and compromise, a once free and ruggedly individualistic America is already on the brink of becoming a European-like quasi-, if not, socialist state. That is nothing close to the America our Founders envisioned. So, like it, or not, it is voices on the Right who recognize and are willing to engage the fight today that most need to be heard. This can’t we all get along nonsense has done nothing but undermine conservatism over the last twenty, or more years. And more of the same is only going to make things worse.
My thoughts exactly.
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